Current Undergraduate Courses

Undergraduate Courses

2023–24 CALENDAR

IMPORTANT NOTICE: The following DTS program requirements apply only to those students who enrolled in the program in or after September 2014. Students who enrolled before that date should fulfill the requirements listed in the A&S Calendar of the year in which they enrolled.

DIASPORA & TRANSNATIONAL STUDIES MAJOR

Completion Requirements:
(7.0 credits, including at least 2.0 at the 300+ level)

  1. DTS200Y1 ( Introduction to Diaspora and Transnational Studies) 
  2. DTS300H1 (Qualitative and Quantitative Reasoning)
  3. 4.5 full-course equivalents (FCEs) from Group A and B courses, with at least two FCEs from each group. Coverage must include at least two diasporic communities or regions, to be identified in consultation with the program advisor.
  4. 1.0 DTS credit at the 400-level

DIASPORA & TRANSNATIONAL STUDIES MINOR

Completion Requirements:
(4.0 credits, including at least 1.0 credit at the 300+ level)

  1. DTS200Y1 (Introduction to Diaspora and Transnational Studies)
  2. DTS300H1 (Qualitative and Quantitative Reasoning)
  3. 2.0 credits from Group A and B courses, with at least 1.0 credit from each group.
  4. 0.5 DTS credit at the 400-level

Group A and B Courses:

Group A: Humanities Courses

Course Code Course Title Course Code Course Title
AFR250Y1 Africa in the 21st Century: Challenges and Opportunities HIS361H1 The Holocaust, from 1942
AFR351Y1 African Systems of Thought HIS403H1 Jews and Christians in Medieval and Renaissance Europe
CAR328H1 Caribbean Indentureship and its Legacies HIS446H1 Gender and Slavery in the Atlantic World
CJS200H1 Introduction to Jewish Thought HIS467H1 French Colonial Indochina: History, Cultures, Texts, Film
CJS201H1 Introduction to Jewish Culture JGU216H1 Globalization and Urban Change
CSE341H1 Theorizing Settler Colonialism, Capitalism and Race JHA384H1 Japan in the World, Mid-16th to Mid-20th Century
CSE449H1 Contemporary Theories in Critical Disability Studies JQR360H The Canadian Census: Populations, Migrations and Demographics
EAS105H1 Modern East Asia NMC252H1 Hebrew Bible
EAS247H1 History of Capitalism in Modern Japan RLG319H1 Death, Dying and Afterlife
EAS251H1 Aesthetics and Politics in 20th Century Korea RLG341H1 Dreaming of Zion: Exile and Return in Jewish Thought
EAS271H1 20th Century Korean History RLG346H1 Time and Place in Judaism
EAS420H1 Travels, Travelers and Travel Accounts in Asia SAS114H1 Introduction to South Asian Studies
ENG270H1 Introduction to Colonial and Postcolonial Writing SAS318H1 Colonialism and Tradition
ENG285H1 The English Language in the World SLA302H1 The Imaginary Jew
SLA318H1 City of Saints and Sinners: Kyiv through the Centuries
ENG367H1 African Literatures in English SLA357H1 Literature of Exile and Immigration
FRE332H1 Francophone Literatures SLA380H1 Language, Politics, Identity
GER361H1 Yiddish Literature in Translation (E) SPA258H1 Introduction to Hispanic Literary Studies
HIS208Y1 History of the Jewish People SPA259H1 Introduction to Hispanic Cultural Studies
HIS291H1 Latin America: The Colonial Period UNI101H1 Citizenship in the Canadian City
HIS295Y1 History of Africa UNI103H1 Gradients of Health in an Urban Mosaic
HIS312H1 Immigration to Canada WGS369H1 Studies in Post-Colonialism
HIS338H1 The Holocaust, to 1942 WGS426H1 Gender and Globalization: Transnational Perspectives
HIS359H1 Regional Politics and Radical Movements in the 20th Century Caribbean    

 

Group B: Social Sciences Courses 

Course Code Course Title Course Code Course Title
ANT324H1 Tourism & Globalization JPR364H1 Religion and Politics in the Nation State
ANT345H1 Global Health: Anthropological Perspectives JPR374H1 Religion and Power in the Postcolony
ANT347H1 Metropolis: Global Cities LCT304H1 Praxis and Performance
ANT356H1 Anthropology of Religion POL201H1 Politics of Development
ANT364H1 Environment & Globalization POL224H1 Canada in Comparative Perspective
ANT366H1 Anthropology of Activism and Social Justice POL301H1 Colonial Legacies and Post-Independence African Politics
ANT370H1 Introduction to Social Anthropological Theory POL305H1 Introduction to Latin American Politics and Societies
ANT426H1 Western Views of the Non-West POL324H1 European Union: Politics, Institutions and Society
ANT456H1 Queer Ethnography POL417H1 Politics of North-South Relations
ANT460H1 Global Perspectives on Women's Health POL442H1 Topics in Latin American Politics
ANT475H1 Reading Ethnography SOC210H1 Ethnicity in Social Organization
CSE342H1 Theory and Praxis in Food Security SOC214H1 Sociology of the Family
ENT391H1 Exploring New Ventures SOC220H1 Social Stratification
ENT392Y1 Exploring New Ventures SOC256H1 Lives and Societies
GGR320H1 Geographies of Transnationalism, Migration and Gender SOC315H1 Domestic Violence
GGR326H1 Remaking the Global Economy SOC360H1 Social Movements
GGR336H1 Urban Historical Geography of North America SOC367H1 Race, Class, and Gender
GGR341H1 The Changing Geography of Latin America SOC370H1 Immigration and Employment
GGR360H1 Culture, History, and Landscape SOC388H1 Sociology of Everyday Life
GGR363H1 Critical Geographies: An Introduction to Radical Ideas on Space, Society and Culture SOC481H1 Culture and Social Networks
GGR430H1 Geographies of Markets UNI101H1 Citizenship in the Canadian City
JAL355H1 Language and Gender UNI103H1 Gradients of Health in an Urban Mosaic
JGE321H1 Multicultural Perspectives on Environmental Management VIC183H1 Individuals and the Public Sphere: Shaping Memory
JGU216H1 Globalization and Urban Change VIC184H1 Individuals and the Public Sphere: History, Historiography, and Making Cultural Memory
JGU346H1 The Urban Planning Process    

 


DTS COURSE DESCRIPTIONS OFFERED IN 2023–24

 

DTS199H1 - Superman and Other Migrants
Fall 2023, Tuesdays 10:00am - 12:00pm

Description TBA

Instructors: N. Seidman

Distribution Requirement Status: Humanities, Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Thought, Belief and Behaviour (2)


DTS200Y1 - Introduction to Diaspora and Transnational Studies I 
Full Year 2023–24, Tuesdays 12:00pm - 2:00pm

What is the relationship between place and belonging, between territory and memory? How have the experiences of migration and dislocation challenged the modern assumption that the nation-state should be the limit of identification? What effect has the emergence of new media of communication had upon the coherence of cultural and political boundaries? All of these questions and many more form part of the subject matter of Diaspora and Transnational Studies. This introductory course ex-amines the historical and contemporary movements of peoples and the complex issues of identity and experience to which these processes give rise as well as the creative possibilities that flow from movement and being moved. The area of study is comparative and interdisciplinary, drawing from the social sciences, history, the arts and humanities. Accordingly, this course provides the background to the subject area from diverse perspectives and introduces students to a range of key debates in the field, with particular attention to questions of history, globalization, cultural production and the creative imagination.

Instructors: S. Kassamali, A. Pesarini

Exclusion: DTS201H1, DTS202H1
Distribution Requirement Status: Humanities, Social Science course
Breadth Requirement: Creative and Cultural Representations (1) + Society and its Institutions (3)


DTS300H1 - Qualitative and Quantitative Reasoning 
Winter 2024, Tuesdays 10:00am – 12:00pm
 

Focuses on research design and training in methods from history, geography, anthropology, literary and cultural studies, and other disciplines appropriate to Diaspora and Transnational Studies. Prepares students to undertake primary research required in senior seminars.

Instructor: P. Scanlan

Prerequisite: Completion of 9.0 credits
Recommended Preparation: DTS200Y1/CJS200H1/CJS201H1
Distribution Requirement Status: Humanities, Social Science
Breadth Requirement: The Physical and Mathematical Universes (5)


DTS305H1 - Topics in Diaspora and Transnationalism: NAFTA: Anthropology of Free Trade
Winter 2024, Thursdays 10:00am – 12:00pm

 

Do you ever wonder where your yearlong supply of avocados comes from? Do you know how Canadian mining companies benefit from Mexico’s so-called drug war? Did you know that an auto-part crosses the Mexico-US border, back-and-forth, about seven times before being assembled into a car? This course grapples with these and similar questions by taking a critical look at free trade. Specifically, we focus on NAFTA/CUSMA, the Canada-Mexico-United States free trade agreement. We approach free trade as a transnational legal and socio-economic structure that engenders contradictions, contestations, and appropriations while simultaneously reproducing the conditions for predatory accumulation. The North American geo-economic region enables the easy and speedy flow of commodities and capital and simultaneously constrains people’s movement through militarized borders and through strictly regulated labour migration. Through a critical look at the ongoing (re)making of “North America,” we examine free trade as an instrument of neoliberal capitalism and imperialism, and as a technology shrinking time-space and of acceleration. Among the topics to be examined are labour, migration, the narcoeconomy, mining, export agriculture, corporations, the environment, and transnational solidarities. The course will provide students with conceptual tools to think critically about free trade in any locale and, more broadly, about current configurations of capitalism.

Instructor: A. Gonzalez Jimenez

Prerequisite: Completion of 9.0 credits
Recommended Preparation: DTS200Y1
Distribution Requirement Status: Humanities, Social Science
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)


DTS310H1 - Transnational Toronto
Fall 2023, Mondays 12:00pm - 5:00pm
 

Toronto is a city increasingly configured through transnational connections and practices. It is a city defined by the scale at which its residents live their lives; a scale that is no longer (if it ever was) parochial, but extends across time and space to connect people and practice across a multitude of locales. Contemporary understandings of Toronto can only be reached through adopting a transnational lens. This course will examine the processes that have produced Toronto as a transnational city over time, including the dynamics of immigration and mobility, experiences of alienation, the global extension of capitalism, and the (re)formation of communities grounded in the complex dynamics of identities produced in a space that is both ‘home’ and away’. We will also explore the specific practices, and connections that produce “Toronto” as a space that transcends its physical geographic boundaries and is continually reproduced in and through the flows of people, capital, objects, ideas, - and the many forces that reproduce and reconfigure these flows.

Instructor: K. MacDonald

Prerequisite: Completion of 9.0 Credits
Distribution Requirement: Humanities, Social Science
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)


DTS314H1 - Citizenship and Multiculturalism 
Fall 2023, Wednesdays 2:00pm – 4:00pm
 

This course examines approaches to belonging and distinction that accompany different models of citizenship. What are some historical and recent trends in the intersections of place, custom, and rights? How have governments related social diversity to social justice in theory and in practice? Areas of emphasis will vary, but may include topics such as authenticity and assimilation; ethno-nationalism; immigration and naturalization policy; indigeneity; insurgency; legacies of colonialism; mass media and popular culture; policing and surveillance; racial stratification; transnational markets; and xenophobia.

Instructor: E. Sammons

Prerequisite: DTS200Y1
Distribution Requirement Status: Humanities, Social Science
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)


DTS390H1 - Independent Study
Fall 2023, Winter 2024
 

A scholarly project chosen by the student, approved by the Department, and supervised by one of its instructors. Consult with the Diaspora and Transnational Studies Program Office for more information. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

Prerequisite: DTS200Y1
Distribution Requirement Status: Humanities, Social Science

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DTS390Y1 -  Independent Study
Full Year 2023–24
 

A scholarly project chosen by the student, approved by the Department, and supervised by one of its instructors. Consult with the Diaspora and Transnational Studies Program Office for more information. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

Prerequisite: DTS200Y1
Distribution Requirement Status: Humanities, Social Science

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DTS401H1 - Advanced Topics in DTS: Being human: Race, Science, and Transnationalism
Winter 2024, Wednesdays, 4:00pm - 6:00pm

 

Who is imagined to be human? Who is not? How does social scientific inquiry produce racial hierarchy and categorize the human? Once firmly rooted in colonial sense-making, scientific knowledge about race and being human now also shapes and is shaped by processes of diaspora and transnationalism. This course invites us to take an in-depth look at the human as envisioned in past and present forms of knowledge making and gathering, of science and surveillance. It also invites us to imagine the future of being human, or not. 

Instructor: N. Bastani

Prerequisite: 14 FCE, including DTS200Y1
Distribution Requirement Status: Humanities, Social Science
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)


DTS402H1 - Advanced Topics in DTS: Desire in Yiddish Literature
Fall 2023, Tuesdays 2:00pm-4:00pm

 

What does "desire" mean to a Yiddish writer? Desire most commonly refers to sexuality and the erotic life. The object of desire may be a person, but it can also be a thing, an idea, an art form, and more. How does our milieu affect our sense of who or what we desire?  Yiddish writers have always been necessarily multicultural, multilingual, trans-continental in knowledge and perspective. They responded to an extraordinarily diverse array of political and social movements including emigration/immigration, various forms of nationalism, socialism, religious belief, rejection of religious observance. In exploring the short fiction and poetry that address these concerns, we will consider authors whose names may be familiar to some (e.g., Isaac Bashevis Singer, Sholem Aleichem); we will certainly read authors who are largely unknown despite English translations of their work (e.g., Celia Dropkin, Lamed Shapiro, Yankev Glatshteyn, and more). Experimenting with modern literary forms and modern personal and political choices, these authors reveal the remarkable range of Yiddish writing in the twentieth century. (All works will be read in English translation, though Yiddish texts will also be made available.)

Instructor: A. Norich

Prerequisite: 14 FCE, including DTS200Y1/CJS200H1/CJS201H1
Distribution Requirement Status: Humanities, Social Science
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)


DTS404H1 - Advanced Topics in DTS: History and Counterstories in the Black Mediterranean
Fall 2023, Wednedays 2:00pm-4:00pm

 

This course explores colonial histories and counter- stories of resistance in the Black Mediterranean. Intended not only as a physical space but also as a symbolic site, the Black Mediterranean can be seen as a new theoretical approach useful to understand the racialized production of bodies and borders, and to highlight forms of resistance. The course will focus on Italy and its (post)colonial ties with Libya, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia. Going from the Italian invasion of Eritrea in 1890 to the current so-called “refugee crisis”; the case of Italy illustrates the intersections and resignification of race, bodies and borders in the Mediterranean region, as well as the presence of important histories of resistance and alternative conceptualisations of belonging. 

Instructor: A. Pesarini

Prerequisite: 14 FCE, including DTS200Y1
Distribution Requirement Status: Humanities, Social Science
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)


DTS410H1 - Diasporic Foodways 
Winter 2024, Wednesdays 5:00pm - 7:00pm
 

Food links people across space and time. As it spirals outward from parochial sites of origin to articulate with new sites, actors and scales, it assumes new substance and meaning in new locales. This movement of food gives rise to new ‘foodways’ to help us to understand the past in terms of temporally connected sites of intense interaction. Food also plays a strong role in shaping translocal identities. As peoples have moved in the world, food has played a central role in (re)defining who they are, reproducing myth and ritual, and bounding diasporic communities. This course seeks to address questions surrounding the dynamics of the food ‘we’ eat, the ways in which ‘we’ eat, the meaning ‘we’ give to eating, and the effect of eating in a transnational world. Recognizing that culinary culture is central to diasporic identifications, the focus is on the place of food in the enduring habits, rituals, and everyday practices that are collectively used to produce and sustain a shared sense of diasporic cultural identity.

Instructor: K. MacDonald

Prerequisite: 14 FCE, including DTS200Y1
Distribution Requirement Status: Humanities, Social Science
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)


DTS412H1 - The Diasporic Imagination 
Winter 2024, Tuesdays 2:00pm - 4:00pm
 

This course focuses on echoes of diasporic and transnational life in artistic work, and on the significance of aesthetic production to the formation of diasporic and transnational worlds. How have practices, producers, and works of art illuminated the particularities of diasporic life? How do conventions of genre, performance, and tradition shape experiences of borders and crossings? Areas of emphasis will vary but may spotlight particular historical and geographic contexts, and may foreground one or more form, including film, poetry, fiction, music, and dance.

Instructor: E. Sammons

Prerequisite: 14 FCE, including DTS200Y1
Distribution Requirement Status: Humanities, Social Science
Breadth Requirement: Creative and Cultural Representations (1)


DTS414H1 - Money on the Move
Fall 2023, Tuesdays 10:00am – 12:00pm
 

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, industry and finance matured together, pushing people into motion around the world. The instruments of long-distance trade, like insurance, credit, and debt, connected people in new and sometimes unsettling ways. The free movement of goods and cash was mirrored by restrictions on migration to some parts of the world and by forced or coerced migration to others. This course explores the history of the rise of global capitalism at a human scale, exploring how financialization, industrialization and imperialism overlapped and intertwined, and how the rise of liberalism and capitalism weighed on human lives.

Instructor: P.Scanlan

Prerequisite: 14 FCE, including DTS200Y1
Distribution Requirement Status: Humanities, Social Science
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)


DTS416H1 - Wars, Diaspora, and Music
Fall 2023, Wednesdays10:00am – 12:00pm
 

The course explores how composers, performers, songwriters and audiences made sense of traumatic and violent events that they experienced, such as ethnic conflicts, wars, exile and displacement, through music. We will also look at how government ideologies employ music during wars. The case studies will include stories of Jewish, Palestinian, Afghan, Romani, Korean, Rwandan and other diasporas severely affected by wars and violence.

Instructor: A.Shternshis

Prerequisite: 14 FCE, including DTS200Y1 
Distribution Requirement Status: Humanities, Social Science
Breadth Requirement: Society and its Institutions (3)


REGARDING DIASPORA AND TRANSNATIONAL STUDIES COURSES

University of Toronto Mississauga courses that can be applied to the program
Please visit the UTM Diaspora & Transnational Studies page.